A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.

New Owner of Patch Lays Off Hundreds (New York Times)
Just two weeks ago, AOL announced that it was handing over the majority stake in Patch, its troubled local news enterprise, to Hale Global, an investment company that specializes in turning around troubled companies through technological innovation. On Wednesday morning, the decision became evident when hundreds of Patch employees were laid off in a reorganization.

Sheepshead Bites Founder: If You Meet the Market’s Needs, It’ll Meet Yours (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Event sponsorships are becoming a double-digit percentage of revenue among some news sites in local digital. At independent hyperlocal news site Sheepshead Bites in Southern Brooklyn, publisher Ned Berke looks at event sponsorships from a wider perspective as he explains in this Q & A on how his six-year-old site is performing.

Amazon to Offer Kindle Checkout System to Physical Retailers (Wall Street Journal)
Amazon plans to offer brick-and-mortar retailers a checkout system that uses Kindle tablets as soon as this summer, people briefed on the company’s plans said. The project would thrust Amazon, the largest U.S. e-commerce merchant, into the realm of physical retail stores, where more than 90% of commerce is still conducted, and open up a new trove of data from consumers’ in-store spending habits.

5 Tools for Creating Targeted Hyperlocal Lead Lists (Street Fight)
Rather than hitting up every business on the block, some hyperlocal sales teams are taking a more strategic approach. By using targeted lead lists from business intelligence companies, startups can pinpoint the specific merchants who are most likely to be receptive to their pitches. Here are five business intelligence tools that hyperlocal vendors can use to create targeted lead lists.

Facebook Officially A Mobile Ad Firm With 53% Of Ad Revenue Now Coming From Its 945M Mobile Users (TechCrunch)
Facebook hit a major milestone with yesterday’s Q4 2013 earnings as it crossed the halfway point and now earns 53% of ad revenue from mobile, or $1.37 billion of its $2.59 billion in revenue this quarter. The small-screen skrilla comes from 556 million daily mobile users up from 507 million in Q3, and 945 million monthly mobile users up from 874 million.

It’s Time to Shift the Focus from Mobile to Mobility (AdAge)
Mobility in marketing is going beyond mobile advertising, to adding mobile functionality and targeting across your marketing effort. Instead of allocating a separate budget to mobile alongside other media channels, we should be applying mobility solutions to our print, video, search, out of home and website

Baidu Scrambles to Monetise its Mobile Real Estate (Reuters)
China’s Baidu knows where you are, where you’re going and when you want dumplings, guiding you from web page to restaurant when you use its search engine. Now the biggest Chinese technology company traded in the United States needs to figure out how to make money when you use its mobile Internet services, a game it admits it came to late.

Dunkin’ Donuts Scales Mobile Loyalty Program to Drive Payments Volume (Mobile Commerce Daily)
Following a test in several markets over the past few months, Dunkin’ Donuts is taking its new DD Perks loyalty program national in a move that could have a big impact on the volume of mobile payments. The DD Perks program will be fully integrated in the Dunkin’ Donuts mobile app by early February, enabling users to earn rewards and pay for purchases at the coffee and baked goods chain from their mobile phones.

GoDaddy Accepts Partial Responsibility in Social Engineering Attack of @N’s Customer Account (TheNextWeb)
Naoki Hiroshima’s tale of how he lost his @N Twitter handle to a social engineering attack on his PayPal and GoDaddy accounts has gone massively viral over the past 24 hours. After looking into the matter, GoDaddy has responded by admitting that it did hand over some information, while also noting that the attacker already had “possession of a large portion” of the required customer information.